Valentine's Dinner...In a Snap!

With Valentine's Day rapidly approaching, Lauren and I made it our mission to create the perfect dinner to cook for your valentine, without it being too complicated, too fancy or too heavy.  (I mean, who wants to be feeling the food coma when you should be feeling your date...if you know what we mean!!)

This meal looks like it would be a difficult meal to put together...in other words, it looks fancy schmancy. However, it is easy, delicious, and mostly healthy!

For our dinner, we decided on making roasted chicken caprese for our main course with roasted mixed vegetables as a side.

Veggies for Roasting

For the roasted vegetables, we decided to use a mix of red peppers, green peppers, red onion, eggplant and zucchini. Feel free to adapt your vegetable choices to your and your guests' unique tastes-- Lauren hates mushrooms, thus why we didn't include them, but Stacy loves them!  We just cut the veggies into chunks/strips (all roughly about the same size so they cooked at the same rate) then drizzled them with olive oil, garlic, oregano and pepper and roasted them in the oven for about 60 minutes at 375/350 degrees. In fact--we roasted the veggies at the same time as we made the chicken and the roasted tomatoes (see--this meal is EASY PEASY!!)

Sauce for our Chicken

The roasted chicken caprese is easy to make. All you need to be able to do is measure a few ingredients, cut up tomatoes into quarters, cut up mozzarella cheese into cubes, squeeze a lemon, chop some basil, put it all together and throw it in the oven. So. Easy. Now, Lauren and I are all about making our lives super, duper simple. So, we bought the thin sliced chicken breasts--they are more expensive, but they are such a time saver. If you want to save money, or if you like your chicken breasts a little thicker, get the family pack or the regular chicken breasts--you can cut them into thinner breasts, or cook them as is. Your choice.  For the mozzarella, we used the packaged kind you can find in your grocer's dairy case.  We find that it tastes delicious and is a little lighter on your wallets.

Dessert is Assembled!

And, what good is a romantic meal without a special dessert? We made indoor s'more sundaes. Yes, they were as amazing as they sound. They look so fancy and like they'd be such a difficult thing to make, but, they were the complete opposite.  All you need to be able to do is crush a few graham crackers, melt some butter, scoop some ice cream, put it in the freezer and then under the broiler. The recipe says you should melt semi-sweet chocolate morsels to make a chocolate sauce. But, as the evening went on, we found making the chocolate sauce right after dinner, because we wanted it to be fresh, would take too much time, so we went with Hershey's chocolate syrup instead. This dessert wowed our guests!  Once dessert hit the table the talking was at a standstill and everyone became way more interested in the cupcake style desserts than catching up on their daily activities.  (We can't wait to make these again for a dinner party or a girls' night in or any other special occasion like, you know, next Tuesday, a snowy Saturday...)

The dinner? Deceptively simple, filling without being heavy, delicious and a huge hit.

When you have the best Valentine's Day dinner ever, you can thank us. We accept cash, checks, jewelry, cookies... Just kidding (mostly). Hope you have the best Valentine's Day!

Our Completed Dinner

The Best Dessert Ever

Love,

The recipes are as follows:

Roasted Chicken Caprese -- Serves 4

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (1lb)
6 medium roma tomatoes (or whatever's in season)
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp kosher salt
1/4 cup olive oil
8 oz. mozzarella cheese, cut into 1/4" pieces
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
1/2 tsp black pepper

Lemon Vinaigrette:
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil

Place chicken in 1 gallon zipper bag. Add lemon vinaigrette, seal and marinate in fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Cut each tomato into quarters, lengthwise. Place them in a medium bowl and gently toss with sugar, salt and olive oil. Spoon tomato mixture onto a rimmed cookie sheet so tomato pieces don't touch. Roast for 30 minutes. Spoon tomatoes and all accumulated juices into a small bowl. Add the cheese, basil leaves and pepper, tossing gently. Let this mixture sit at room temperature while the chicken cooks.

Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Remove the chicken from the marinade and discard the marinade. Place the chicken on the same cookie sheet. Roast for about 30 minutes, turning once, or until cooked.

Spoon the tomato and mozzarella mixture over the chicken and serve.

Indoor S'more Sundae -- Serves 4

Graham Cracker Crust:
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 5 whole graham crackers)
3 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Salt (just a pinch)

4 scoops vanilla ice cream
1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows

Quick Chocolate Sauce:
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 tbsp whole milk

For the graham cracker crust: Mix the graham cracker crumbs, butter, sugar, cinnamon and a sprinkle of salt together in a bowl. Firmly press the crust into muffin tins to make individual crusts. Top each crust with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Press the mini marshmallows into the ice cream, covering the scoop completely. You will have 4 s'more "domes." Freeze at least 1 hour.

For the quick chocolate sauce: Immediately before serving, heat the broiler to low. Toss the chocolate chips with the milk in a ramekin or small bowl and microwave 30 seconds. Stir until smooth and set aside. Place the s'more domes under the broiler until marshmallows brown, about 30 seconds. Watch them constantly as they burn easily. Place each s'more on a plate and drizzle with the chocolate sauce.

Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at theaccessorizedlife@gmail.com